The fact that knowledge management plays an important role in the life of businesses can be proved by the number ofthe scientific publications dealing with this issue. It can be said to be a current favourite and well-processed topic of literature. In practice among middle- and senior managers it has become a means of strategy creation as its methods are more often used at an operative level. Our decision to begin our research in this field was strengthened by the further consideration of a quotation by Edwin Land - the leader of HP - often cited in the literature on this topic. According to Land "90 percent of Polaroid's capital get in their car and go home every evening". This is indeed true but according to Land the following morning they also get back in their car and 90% of the company's capital will again be in the same place and available once more. Since a part of knowledge belongs to the individual, meaning that it cannot be documented or verbalised as it is based on experience, the question arises as to what types of new tasks the holding of this knowledge creates, especially in the case of those in key positions and employees considered as key figures from another viewpoint. This question becomes particularly exciting - where we are also able to see the real value/benefit of this study- if, through analysing the most common form of predictable labour movements (here I refer mainly to retirement), sucha procedure can be reconstructed, thus providing businesses with the means to prepare themselves for a continuous shar of tacit or experimental knowledge in the case of other predictable labour movement (like maternity leave or a longer period in the foreign domiciles of a subsidiary or a parent company). A major part of preserving competitive advantage nowadays is knowledge, especially tacit knowledge. For this reason we will highlight that due to these dynamic processes tacit knowledge sharing of businesses should be continuous in corporate practice in the case of every "important" person. This direction would differ from the approaches of knowledge management dealing with implicit knowledge in that we would not look for the solution to transforming implicit knowledge to explicit knowledge but rather in such a system-based process, the result of which would be a conscious management of tacit knowledge sharing. The main line of knowledge management science is how to transform implicit knowledge to explicit in order to share it. I would like to introduce a new wayof knowledge sharing which doesn't rely on traditional tools.

In the 21st century tacit knowledge and its management has become a central theme of organizations and enterprises. Until the last decade, the possession of physical resources meant wealth and power in business. Labour, capital and natural resources were the key factors of production. Today, this trend is undeniably changing. In the rapidly evolving world of technology the only important factor providing long-term competitive advantage is the knowledge of the employees. Tacit knowledge is an invisible resource which has an enormous effect on the performance and success of a company, though it is personal, context-and cultures-pecific, besides hard to formalize and communicate. Tacit knowledgeincludes experiences, ideas, values and emotions and of course the factors of national culture. The main problem is that institutions are not aware of what kind of knowledge and information they possess. Hence, these assets are unorganized and not focused towards any objectives. The difficulties of sharing the lessons and experiences lead to wasting time and money on solving problems that have already been solved. That is why it is necessary to engage in knowledge management. As part of a wide-range research, we have examined which methods and procedures are used by Hungarian and Slovak companies to facilitate the retention of tacit knowledge of their employees in the organizational memory. How can the national culture influence the use of tacit knowledge management methods? The study involved 124 Hungarian and 122 Slovak companies and raised important questions in the scientific and organizationallife as the focus of our research. In our research we aspired to involve a wide range of enterprises, subsequently we examined small-and medium-size enterprises, multinational companies and organizations from both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. We conducted both qualitative and quantitative research because this is the most effective way of understanding the problem mentioned above.

The role of knowledge is a determinative factor in the life of economy and society. To determine knowledge is not an easy task yet the real task is to determine the right knowledge. From this view knowledge is a sum of experience, ideas and cognitions which can help companies to remain in markets and to realize a maximum profit. At the same time changes of circumstances project in advance that contents and demands of the right knowledge are changing. In this paper we will analyse a special segment on the basis of an empirical survey. We investigated the behaviour and strategies of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the area of knowledge-handling. This survey was realized by questionnaires and wide range statistical methods were used during processing. As a result we will show how these companies are prepared to operate in a knowledge-based economy and in which areas they have prominent deficiencies.